Wednesday, 23 November 2011

Win a Trip to Space Camp!

The US Embassy in Ireland, along with Dublin City University, are giving one teacher and two students a chance to win an all expenses paid trip to Space Camp Huntsville, Alabama in the summer of 2012. Space Camp was founded in 1982 as the U.S. Space & Rocket Center museum’s education program to promote the study of maths, science, and technology. This educational program couples classroom instruction with hands-on activities and teaches teamwork, decision-making, and leadership. Space Camp has become known as one of the premier science / technology / enginnering and maths (STEM) educational programs in the United States.

To win a free trip to Space Camp, students are asked to compete in a caption competition. Each week, over the next four weeks, a photo will be published on the embassy website, Facebook page and Twitter feed. All you have to do is come up with an interesting caption for the photo. You can only submit one caption per picture but you can enter each week. Finalists are chosen weekly with the two best overall captions receiving that amazing trip to Space Camp. Students submit their caption using this form.

There is also a great competition for teachers too. The teacher competition involves the design and submission of a detailed lesson plan on space, space travel, NASA, astronauts, spacecraft, or space camp. (There are a number of preconditions so check the competition page for more info). Lesson plans are submitted online here. The winning teacher will receive that amazing trip to Space Camp (I've spoken to teachers who attended Space Camp before and they absolutely loved it!). The closing date for receipt of entries is December 11th 2011 with the winner being announced in january.